


More Sea Than Land

by hilaryfaye



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, M/M, Ocean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2015-11-03
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:26:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5136329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilaryfaye/pseuds/hilaryfaye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanamiya narrowed his eyes. “What do you want with this place?” </p><p>Imayoshi gave him a serene smile. “Sea witches have their secrets, and we have ours.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Больше море, чем земля](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6354766) by [Kenilvort](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kenilvort/pseuds/Kenilvort)



> Happy Birthday, Jordie!

_The storm is over, and the land has forgotten the storm; the trees are still._

_Under this sun the rain dries quickly._

_…_

_More sea than land am I; my sulky mind, whipped high by tempest in the night, is not so soon appeased._

Edna St. Vincent Millay, _Cap D’ Antibes_

 

* * *

 

 

The breeze came off the water with all the sweep of a gentle hand, stirring the sea grass and the chimes that hung from villagers’ doors. Hanamiya crouched in the grass, chewing on a sweet, watching the waves roll in, placid as calves. The fishing boats bobbed on the water, hauling in the morning catch.

Hara and Yamazaki were arguing about something, in the way that they always did—which was to say that, rather, Yamazaki was arguing with Hara, who wasn’t paying attention. Hara had hold of a glass float—where he had gotten it was anyone’s guess—in which there were now swimming several back conjure fish, flitting about as Hara moved his fingers over the glass. They would vanish in a few days, when the conjure wore off, but for now he had a cluster of children wanting to see the fish, pressing their little hands to the glass to see them swim forward to investigate. A harmless trick.

Hanamiya’s head sank lower on his shoulders as he brooded over the horizon. Seto yawned, stretching himself out on the sand like a seal enjoying the sun. “What’s got you in such a mood?”

“It’s boring,” Hanamiya muttered, folding his arms over his knees. “Everything’s too… calm.”

Seto smiled. “You’re getting ready to call up a storm.”

“Hmm.” Hanamiya scratched some designs in the sand, rubbed them out with the heel of his foot. The clothes he put on whenever he came to shore were beginning to wear, perhaps he should get new ones.

Not until they couldn’t be mended anymore, he decided. He was not eager to haggle over a fair exchange for clothes again. No one ever wanted anything reasonable—they always wanted a spell.

Seto put his arms behind his head, closing his eyes. “Well, tell me before you do, so I can get out of the rain.”

The kids around Hara scattered, shrieking, presumably at the crab that was now scuttling up his arm. Hanamiya frowned, rocking to his feet. “Where are you going?” Seto asked, not opening his eyes.

“For a walk.”

“Try not to get into trouble without me.”

#

Imayoshi knew the words by heart, but he still enjoyed turning over the particular page, tracing his fingers over the inscription, the illustration. It was an ancient discipline, finely tuned by centuries of scholars. A student might spend their whole life striving for perfection and never truly master it. Of course, to even the most disciplined student, their “whole life” might be a rather short affair. Fire magic was not an endeavor to be taken lightly.

He adjusted the position of his spectacles, raising his gaze from the book when he heard his name. Susa looked mildly annoyed, as he usually did with Imayoshi. Imayoshi was not entirely certain that it wasn't simply how Susa’s face was set, or if Susa truly found Imayoshi's mere presence to be a little irritating, however much they considered themselves to be friends. He was inclined to believe it was the latter.

“They tell me the house is about a quarter of a mile that way,” Susa said. “There's no road out to it. We have to walk over the beach. Didn't you pick this place?”

“I did.”

“Then why the hell is it so hard to get to?”

Imayoshi pushed up his spectacles, smiled. “I don't want any unexpected visitors.”

Susa sighed, shook his head. “I knew I should have paid more attention to what you were up to.” He shouldered his bag, picked up a side of their cart. “Now get up before I run you over.”

Imayoshi closed his book and stood, carefully stowing it in the cart once more. “Fortunately,” he said, “we only need to move all our things over twice.”

“That's two times too many,” Susa replied.

The seaside might have seemed an odd place for two fire mages to take their studies. It was more difficult to summon up a flame, even a spark. To Imayoshi's reasoning, it was that much more difficult to let oneself go up in flames. It was an environment in which to test ones limits.

They would have a year in that house, no more, no less. That was what the mage school had given them. A year of independent study. Enough, Imayoshi supposed, for them to determine whether or not he was likely to get himself killed.

The walk down the beach was not a terribly long one, except for the struggle of getting their belongings across the soft sand. Susa muttered under his breath as they dragged it across the beach, head bent to the task, so that it was a while before either of them noticed they had an audience.

Imayoshi spotted him first. “Susa, look over there.” Standing on the rocks where the waves met the shore, too far away to really make out anything of his face. He was the only person they had seen since they left the village.

“Do you suppose we could ask him for help?” Susa asked a little caustically. Imayoshi glanced at him to make some remark, and when he looked back, the watcher was gone.

“That’s odd,” Imayoshi said.

The wind had begun to pick up with a cool bite, gray clouds rolling. They picked up the pace, pushing their cart down the beach, not stopping to look for the watcher again. The house, mercifully, was not very far, and they were under the eaves before the rain began. “A storm,” Susa said. “On the first day. Lovely.”

They unpacked what they would need that night, and afterward Imayoshi sat in the door and watched the storm brewing, dark clouds pulling over the sky and the last fishermen returning to shore as the sea churned and darkened. It was hardest to see them, their boats hardly more than a speck of color against the waves.

Susa came to the door with a pot of tea and two cups. “The sky was so clear when we started.”

Imayoshi knew better than to imagine that Susa was making an empty remark about the weather. They could both feel that it wasn’t a natural storm. The air had taken on a charge, almost like the weather before a thunderstorm, but a practiced mage could make the distinction between electricity and other forces. “A greeting from our audience this morning, I suspect.”

Susa sat next to Imayoshi, pouring the tea. The tea would cool quickly in the wind. “They said there were no other mages in the area. We should have expected sea witches.”

The shutters on the windows began to rattle. Imayoshi cradled the cup in his hand, the ceramic heating so that it was almost too hot to touch. “A place like this must be a dream for them. None of the commotion of a port city, no one pressing them for their secrets.”

“You suppose there’s more than one?”

“For a storm this size, I’d have to imagine there must be.” The rain battered the sand, and the waves frothed at the shore, the roar of saltwater drowning out everything but the keening of the gulls. “It’ll be quite the night.”

#

The air always smelled different, the morning after a storm. Hanamiya dressed on the rocks, ringing water from his clothes. He had used to hide them along the shore, but he grew tired of being forced to land at the same place, and having sand in the cloth. It was less annoying to let the clothes dry as he wore them.

It wasn’t as if he would catch a chill.

They had caught several unfortunate birds in the storm. Feathers littered the beach, as did cracked shells, and driftwood logs thrown up after who knew how many years. It did not make his trek over the sand any easier.

The sun was only just beginning to rise, and there was no smoke yet from the house’s chimney. Hanamiya knew that house—an old man had lived there for many years, and he had passed sometime while Hanamiya had been away. He’d had no family that anyone knew of, and Hanamiya had expected the house to fall into disrepair, as it was so far away from the village.

He had not considered the possibility that it might gain new residents.

He listened outside the windows, and hearing no stirring inside he tried the door with a gentle touch, pulling it open as quietly as he could. He didn’t fear the mages, but he preferred to have a look around without them.

Hara had wanted to come with him, but Hanamiya had made him stay behind. Kazuya couldn’t quietly sneak about if his life depended on it—he was always talking too loudly, or touching the wrong thing and sending it clattering to the floor. He might have trusted Furuhashi or Seto to come along, but for reasons he could not quite explain even to himself, he wanted to investigate alone.

They had yet to unpack, chests and rucksacks piled into one corner. Hanamiya crouched next to the pile, gently loosing drawstrings and easing open the clasps of chests, pulling out clothes and cookware, books and mechanisms made of iron, investigating anything that looked even slightly different from what could be found in the village. The mechanisms interested him for a while, though he couldn’t make any sense of what they were for. They carried the scent of sorcery.

The books, though, that was where the real promise of discovering these mages’ purpose.

He balanced the first book on his knees, leafing through the pages. There were not many books to be found in the village, and the number that these mages possessed—all of them unfamiliar to Hanamiya—drew his interest. It was delicately inked, color twined across the pages, in contrast to the formal black calligraphy that lined each page, instructing the reader on the finer aspects of fire magic. (So, they were fire mages—that was cause for wondering.) It seemed to Hanamiya’s eye as if the book had been written and illustrated by two different people. The hand that was responsible for the disciplined calligraphy couldn’t have also given over the carefree lines of the illustrations, which sometimes threatened to encroach upon the writing, as if the authors had been writing two different books on the same pages.

Behind him, someone politely coughed.

Hanamiya turned his head, taking in the fire mage. He had pulled on a robe over his sleep clothes, and wore a pair of spectacles which glinted in the light of the lamp he carried, though Hanamiya couldn’t imagine he needed it to see by. It was a tacit warning.

The mage held the lamp at waist-height, gauging Hanamiya in silence. Hanamiya stared back, aware of his hair drying against his face. Then—quite to Hanamiya’s surprise—the mage smiled. “Good morning,” he said. “To what do I owe the honor?”

Hanamiya stared at him, brow creased, not sure what to make of him. “Who are you?” he asked bluntly.

The mage stepped to the hearth, turning rather rudely away from Hanamiya. He set the lamp down, stacking wood and kindling, stuffing the corners with moss. Hanamiya craned to see what he was doing, but all he saw was a few sparks catch the moss, and the kindling began to take the flame. The mage turned back and Hanamiya looked away.

“My name is Imayoshi,” the mage said, cheerful. “And you?”

Hanamiya didn’t answer.

“Surely there must be something I should call you by?”

“What are you doing here?”

Imayoshi gestured the hearth. “Would you like some tea?”

Hanamiya stared at him a moment, and nodded. There was a limit to anyone’s hospitality, and he meant to learn as much as he could about the fire mages before either decided to test their magic against him. He and the others, Hanamiya thought, could obliterate this stretch of the shore if they needed to—but he preferred to think of that as a drastic measure.

The mage hummed to himself as he sought out a tea pot, leaves, and two cups among their possessions. He filled the tea pot from a fresh water barrel that had belonged to the old man, and hung it over the fire. “I and my companion are here to study and refine our trade,” Imayoshi said, carefully avoiding any indication of what that trade was. He was testing to see how much Hanamiya already knew and understood.

“What does a fire mage want with the coastline?” Hanamiya closed the book, discarding it on the pile. “This place shouldn’t call to people like you.” He said it with more bite than necessary. He trusted mages little, and fire less.

Imayoshi sat by the hearth, legs folded and hands resting in his lap. His smile never wavered. “You were the one who watched us from the rocks yesterday, weren’t you?”

Hanamiya did not answer.

“And the one who called up the storm.”

Hanamiya narrowed his eyes. “What do you want with this place?”

“Sea witches have their secrets, and we have ours.” Imayoshi gave him a serene smile, and retrieved the tea pot with a bare hand. Hanamiya almost flinched, but Imayoshi was not burned, and poured the tea as if nothing at all was odd about it. Steam rose in thin ribbons, stirred by the drafts of the house.

Imayoshi drank.

Hanamiya did not. Imayoshi made no remark about it nor even an indication that he noticed. Hanamiya wondered what sort of man he was among other fire mages, or among ordinary people.

“I take it,” Imayoshi said, “that you and the others do not want us here.”

Hanamiya rested his hands on his knees. “What others?”

Imayoshi’s smile broadened. “You don’t mean to tell me you summoned up a storm of that size by yourself?”

“What do you know about the sea?”

“Less than you, I’m sure, but I know enough about magic.” Imayoshi sipped his tea. “An unnatural storm of that scale, summoned so quickly—you still look more like a man than a creature of the sea.”

“Is that what you imagine we become?”

“What do you suppose my kind become, when we overreach our limits?”

Hanamiya gazed at him. “You don’t become anything. You die.” He knew little enough about fire magic, but he knew that. A fire mage who reached too far was consumed by the flames.

Imayoshi nodded, still smiling. “I haven’t decided yet, whether it’s better to be limited by death, or the bonds of humanity.”

Hanamiya almost smiled. “Humanity is such a limiting concept.” He could hear Imayoshi’s companion rising, and supposed it was time to make his exit. He took a swallow of the fast cooling tea, and rose. “You can stay here for now.” He cast Imayoshi a glance. “But if you cause trouble, I will drive you out.”

Imayoshi’s smile never wavered. “You don’t own this place.”

“No one owns any place.” Hanamiya turned away, stepping over the threshold, and back out onto the sand.

#

From his seat on the floor Imayoshi watched the stranger retreat, a dark spot against the pale sands. The only evidence of the visitor was the trail of saltwater and sand, and the half-drunk cup of tea. Imayoshi watched until the visitor disappeared from the narrow view of his door, walking to the south, away from the village. He finished his tea and rose to begin cooking.

The first thing Susa noticed was that the books had been disturbed. He muttered a curse, leafing through the pages. “…must have gotten damp when it was raining… Imayoshi did you track all this sand in?”

“We had a visitor.”

Susa glanced up from the book. “What?”

“One of the sea witches.” Imayoshi began to sort through their various cooking items. “He didn’t give me his name.”

“What did he want?”

“To investigate us. Do you want tea?”

#

Hanamiya had a favorite place, to get back to the sea. The rocks loomed a little higher there, slick and smooth from the wear of time and tide, rimed with salt and rotting seaweed. He knew the safest way to the farthest point of those rocks, where they met the surging waves. From there, he only need jump, and let the sea swallow him up.

The light was easier to bear, underwater. He slid beneath the waves, into the subtler swell and pull, using the undertow to drag him back out to the kelp forest.

He moved in the water as easily as a creature born to it. How could anyone content themselves with splashing along the surface, never truly immersed? It was a greater trial to Hanamiya to walk on land than it had ever been to swim.

He found the others still there, his entrance hardly noted. Furuhashi skimmed the bottom near the sand, a net in his hand, catching the crabs that were so prized by the villagers. Seto napped, tucked away in some rocks, hair stirred in the same motion as the weeds. Hara chased Yamazaki through the tangles of kelp, spinning bubbles of air and popping them in Yamazaki’s face, while Yamazaki tried to escape, or to retaliate with a length of kelp, which above the water might have been almost like a whip, but below it was as effective a weapon as a kerchief.

Seto woke as Hanamiya passed, and stirred from the rocks, following him. “Where did you go?”

Hanamiya shrugged.

“Was it to take a look at our new neighbors? Don’t look at me like that, we’ve known each other too long.” They were in the tangles of kelp, out of sight of the others. “So? Find anything interesting?”

“They’re fire mages.”

Seto’s eyebrows rose into his hair. “Fire mages?”

“I couldn’t get it out of the one just what it is they want with this place.” Hanamiya caught the sulking tone in his voice, and glanced away from Seto.

“You spoke to them?”

“One. Imayoshi.” It gnawed at Hanamiya, how Imayoshi had never seemed to be the slightest bit put off by him. He had hoped he might be able to scare him off, at least unsettle him, but Imayoshi had only given him that serene smile.

“You don’t like him.”

“No, I don’t.” Hanamiya turned to go down to the roots of the kelp forest, saying, “I’m going to figure out a way to get rid of him.”


	2. Salt

The first weeks passed without much incident. The quiet village agreed with Imayoshi, who made a point to befriend everyone he met in their brief weekly visits, chatting as amiably with the grandmothers as he did with the fishermen or the children. The children, especially, were interested in them—equal parts frightened and enthralled by the tricks Imayoshi performed for them, flowers of fire blossoming in the palm of his hand, hearth fires guttering out and springing back to life with a gesture.

It made some of the adults uneasy, but Imayoshi had a way with people, and assuaged most of their worries with smiles and easy conversation.

Susa missed the bustle of the city, and the company they had had at the mage school. (The latter he especially missed when he grew irritated with Imayoshi, which was often.) Even so, he admitted that the solitude had benefited them both. It had granted them focus, and the space to test their reach without fear of burning much more than sea grass.

Calling up a spark was more difficult in the damp air, but all the more rewarding when it caught. Susa felt like a first year student again, walking the delicate line between using enough strength to create a flame, and not so much that he burned himself.

It might almost have been idyllic, except for the sea witches. Susa did not often see them, but they made their presence known. He woke one morning to the sound of voices inside the house, but when he rose to investigate he found only sand and weeds on the floor. Late in the night he heard laughter coming from the rocks, and he had found more than one dead fish hidden in some place around the house, rotting in the summer heat.

When Susa complained about it, Imayoshi only smiled. “We should feel flattered—we’re important enough to attract their notice.”

“And their ire, apparently.” Susa watched the shore from the threshold. “What happens when it’s something that we can’t ignore?”

“I don’t think it will come to that.” Imayoshi was sat at the window, bandaging his burned hand from an experiment gone awry. They had plenty of salves to treat such burns, but it worried Susa nonetheless. They couldn’t afford to be too reckless, so far away from any more experienced mages. “Besides,” Imayoshi said, “I think we’ll soon be seeing them again.”

“Oh? What makes you say that?”

“A hunch,” Imayoshi said. “That, and the wind’s been picking up.”

It rained again that afternoon, and the wind was strong, but it was not the kind of storm that had welcomed them that first day. Susa put a fire in the hearth, and hung the kettle to boil. Imayoshi was sitting under the eaves, humming a tune while he picked through a tinderbox, weighing each item in his hand and arranging them in a methodical manner whose purpose was clear only to Imayoshi.

It was only because Susa glanced outside at the right moment that he saw the man step out of the surf. He shook his head, damp hair flying, though it mattered little in the rain.

“Susa,” Imayoshi said, “could you put the lantern in the door?”

A whisper of flame and the wick caught, casting a warm yellow glow as Susa hung the lantern out, glancing at Imayoshi. “This is the one who came before?”

“It’s a bit harder to see him in the rain, but yes, I think it is.”

Susa glanced down the beach. “Don’t let him inside until he dries off.”

“That’s not very hospitable of you, Susa.”

“He knows he’s an uninvited guest.” Susa retreated inside, shaking his head. He distrusted witches. They guarded their knowledge too fiercely—mage schools had been formed for the purpose of ensuring that anyone with such talents was properly educated, and had at their disposal a wealth of academic study in their discipline. With witches, one had to find a teacher, and one could never be sure how competent that teacher was, or what knowledge they might be missing.

One never knew what they were hiding.

#

Imayoshi sat out there under the lantern light, humming, until the visitor stood within a few feet of him, just under the eaves, dripping water. Imayoshi continued arranging the contents of the tinderbox, looking up only to smile. “Hello. I wondered when you’d come back.”

The stranger gave him a disgusted look. “What are you doing?”

“I could ask you the same.”

He looked past Imayoshi to the open door. “The other one…”

“He won’t come out to say hello, I imagine. I don’t think he likes you very much.” Imayoshi gestured that there was plenty of room for the visitor to sit. “I didn’t get your name, last time.”

He lifted his chin, gazing at Imayoshi for a long moment as if he couldn’t decide whether or not he trusted the mage with his name. “Hanamiya,” he said, finally. He looked at the place beside Imayoshi and reluctantly sat.

“I thought you might come when it started to rain,” Imayoshi said.

“I don’t control every change in the wind,” Hanamiya said sharply. “The kind of energy it would take to—” He cut himself off, in danger of revealing too much, and glared at Imayoshi.

Imayoshi smiled. “You can’t blame me for being curious. I know so little about this sort of magic.”

“You wouldn’t know what to do with that knowledge even if you did.” Hanamiya looked down at the row of flint and tinder. “Categorize it and catalogue it and make it devoid of any meaning.”

“Is that what you think we do?”

Hanamiya paused, and glanced away. “Why are you here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” Imayoshi dug a pipe out of his pocket, and a tin of tobacco. The leaves began to smolder pinched in his fingers, and he sighed, a stream of smoke rising into the night air. Hanamiya crinkled his nose. “You’re coming here as much out of curiosity as anything else.”

“You don’t belong here.”

“You’re afraid of change,” Imayoshi mused. “Otherwise Susa and I wouldn’t be any threat to you. There are only two of us, after all, and you have what? Four others?”

Hanamiya glared at him.

“I’ve seen them in the village,” Imayoshi said, smiling. “An interesting group. They seem quite loyal to you.”

“Shut up.”

“And you’re very protective of them.” Imayoshi lowered the pipe. “Aren’t I right, Hanamiya?”

Hanamiya looked away, hands curled into fists.

“Why don’t you come inside?” Imayoshi said. “Susa was just making tea, and I have something I want to show you.” Imayoshi rose, and did not wait to see if Hanamiya followed him. He ducked through the door, pipe in hand, and Susa made a sound of disgust.

“I told you not to smoke that in here.”

Imayoshi shrugged and tapped a finger over the bowl, extinguishing the smolder. “Tea?”

“Get it yourself.” Susa caught sight of Hanamiya over Imayoshi’s shoulder, and nodded his head without so much of a flicker in his expression. “Hello.”

Hanamiya returned the greeting absentmindedly, Imayoshi could half feel his gaze. “Have you eaten?” Imayoshi asked.

“Yes.”

Imayoshi poured two cups of tea, humming softly. Neither Hanamiya nor Susa said another word to him or to each other, and the soft plink of the rain against the roof enveloped the house in a comfortable cocoon of near silence. Imayoshi stoked the coals in the hearth and turned back to Hanamiya, smiling as he offered him the tea.

Hanamiya was surveying the room. “We’ve tidied up since the last time you visited,” Imayoshi said, as if Hanamiya were inclined to engage in small talk. “Please, wait here.” He took his tea and left Hanamiya standing in the middle of the room, ignoring Susa as much as Susa was ignoring him.

He returned a few moments later to find Susa bent over a notebook, and Hanamiya inspecting an alembic, clearly trying to divine its purpose. He noticed Imayoshi and returned it to the table it had been set on, glancing over the other tools. “What is it you wanted to show me?”

Imayoshi laid a book on the table, cradling the tea cup in his burned hand as he turned through the pages. “This is a transcription of a much older text,” he said, knowing the book itself had already caught Hanamiya’s interest. “I had to have it copied myself, to bring it into my possession.

“It was written by the mage who founded the school we belong to, while she dwelled along this coastline.”

Hanamiya glanced at Imayoshi. “You want me to believe you’re here following the footsteps of your forebears?”

Imayoshi smiled. “Hardly. Take a look at this.” He traced a finger along the edge of an illustration. “I couldn’t afford the expense of having it rendered with colored inks, as it is in the original, but I think the point comes across much the same.”

Hanamiya lifted the book to take a closer look. The illustration was done with painstaking detail, in fine, dark lines, showing the inside of a fisherman’s home, and the matron of the house sat beside her cook fire, cleaning a fish. The page beside it spoke of how the woman was said to divine the future in fish bones, and how her family claimed that it was her songs that lured the fish near the shore, but Imayoshi knew that was not what set Hanamiya’s mouth in a grim expression that echoed that of the woman on the page.

“The resemblance is remarkable, don’t you think?” Imayoshi asked. “I was surprised, looking at it again after the first time we met.”

“It would be,” Hanamiya said stiffly. “That’s my grandmother.”

“Ah!” Imayoshi sounded almost delighted at the news. “I hoped you might be related. It was feared that much of her knowledge was lost with her passing, and it was impossible to track down any of her descendants—but of course you knew that.”

Hanamiya closed the book. “What do you want, Imayoshi?” His voice had grown edged, indicating his thinning patience.

Susa had paused over his notebook, pen hovering over the page as he pretended not to eavesdrop.

“I want to learn what it is you do.”

“What good is what I know and do to a fire mage?” Hanamiya slapped the book on the table, only further irritated when Imayoshi didn’t flinch. “My methods are useless to you.”

“The tools, perhaps. I have little to do with water, that’s true enough, but there is never anything useless in learning another’s methods.”

Hanamiya narrowed his eyes. “You couldn’t have planned this if you didn’t know I was here.”

“I’m a creature of opportunity.”

“There are things in the sea like that,” Hanamiya replied. “None that you’d be flattered to be compared to.”

“Perhaps not,” Imayoshi said, yielding only a little. “But I couldn’t live a year as neighbors to sea witches and not try.”

Silence fell between them again. Susa’s pen returned to paper, and the rain had become louder.

“Neighbors, is it?” Hanamiya asked. He had a hand on the book again, hesitantly thumbing the pages.

“Is that not what we are?”

“No one ever thinks of us as ‘neighbors.’ Curiosities, usually, or unwanted guests. Until they need something from us, of course.” Hanamiya turned away from Imayoshi, opening the book again to the etching of his grandmother.

“Then perhaps we should all get to know each other better,” Imayoshi said. “There is not that much difference between what we are, after all.”

Hanamiya looked at him skeptically. “Befriending us is not going to open the door to all of our secrets.”

“Of course not,” Imayoshi said, “but perhaps your cohorts will stop troubling my housemate with dead fish.”

Hanamiya feigned innocence. “Have they been doing that? I had no idea.”

#

Hanamiya made the mistake of mentioning Imayoshi’s declaration that they were neighbors to the others. Any one of them by themselves might have laughed it off, but with the group of them it slowly caught their interest, and soon enough he had been dragged back up the beach, everyone wanting to see for themselves what kind of hospitality the fire mages had to offer.

Hanamiya grumbled that it was a bad idea, that associating too much with the mages would bring trouble for them one way or another, to which Hara was quick to point out that Hanamiya had visited them twice already, and he could hardly stop the rest of them from taking that opportunity as well.

Imayoshi was a perfectly gracious host, which only served to irritate Hanamiya more. He thought he could count on Hara, at least, to cause some trouble, but whatever remarks came out of Hara’s unfiltered mouth never cause so much as a ripple. Seto was bored, Furuhashi was quietly curious, and Yamazaki was irritatingly on his best behavior.

Susa kept largely to himself during that visit, though he was not impolite and showed none of the disdain that had been under the surface the last time Hanamiya had seen him. If anything, Hanamiya guessed, the disdain had been meant more for Imayoshi than for him.

They stayed much longer than Hanamiya would have liked, so that they also shared supper with the fire mages. (Imayoshi was not much of a cook, but then, the difference between cooked food and what they usually contented themselves with was still marked.)

Secretly, he had hoped the visit would end in disaster, so that he might never have to call upon the fire mages again, or that they could begin a rivalry—anything but having to look at Imayoshi’s smile.

It turned his stomach.

“You seem unhappy, Hanamiya.” Imayoshi sat next to him. “Can I offer you anything?”

“Your silence.” Hanamiya lifted his drink, though he didn’t particularly want it.

Imayoshi laughed a little, raised his drink. “You haven’t even asked about the fire.”

Hanamiya had noticed, that it burned without wood, or any other fuel he could discern. “What is there to ask?”

“You wound me,” Imayoshi said. “Aren’t you the slightest bit curious?”

“No.” Even had he been, he wouldn’t have asked, simply out of spite. “It’s fire magic, so I don’t care.”

“I refuse to believe you have that little curiosity.”

“Believe what you like.” The others were beginning to break off in their own conversations. With any luck, they’d soon grow bored and Hanamiya could go back to the water.

“What I had hoped,” Imayoshi said, “was that we might be able to agree to a mutual exchange.”

What Imayoshi wanted was a free exchange of knowledge. They could study each other, and through those means strengthen their own skills. Hanamiya was skeptical--he didn't see what a sea witch had to learn from or teach to a fire mage, but Imayoshi spoke of it so confidently Hanamiya was tempted to believe that he knew what he was doing. 

More tempting still, he saw a way to alleviate the crushing boredom that had been driven him to calling up storms and exhausting himself. Imayoshi would only be there for a year, and then Hanamiya could go back to his everyday life. It would not hurt, he thought, to have a diversion.

"Very well," he said, interrupting Imayoshi as he explained again his theories about learning another's methods. "Meet me tomorrow morning at the rocks, down that way."

Imayoshi blinked, and nodded with a smile, thinking he'd won. "Of course. Sunrise or later?"

"Sunrise," Hanamiya answered, having no intention of being there that early. Imayoshi would have to wait for him, if he wanted so badly to learn something from him. 

Eventually the others grew tired, and the group parted ways with their new "neighbors," with Imayoshi entreating them to come whenever they wished, much to the chagrin of his companion.

"What was he so intent on you for?" Hara asked, spinning drops of water out of the air. 

"Seemed like you were having quite the discussion," Seto agreed. 

Hanamiya would drown both of them if it were possible. "He has some stupid theory about learning about other magical practices." He glanced at the horizon. "Make sure there's a good catch tomorrow. Summer will be over soon."

"And what will you be doing?" Seto asked, smiling. 

Hanamiya glowered at him. "Giving that obnoxious fire mage the run around."

#

Hanamiya didn't go to the place he had arranged to meet Imayoshi until the sun was well over the horizon, warming the sand under the clear sky. He was surprised to find Imayoshi sitting on the rocks, just out of the spray, not at all perturbed by Hanamiya's tardiness. Spotting him, Imayoshi pulled his spectacles from his face, gently rubbing away the film of salt that had formed over the glass. 

"Good morning," Imayoshi called, smiling as Hanamiya climbed over the rocks. "Can you breathe underwater, then, or do you have some other trick?"

Hanamiya didn't answer him, just beckoning Imayoshi to follow. The tide was going out, and the stretch of soaked sand was littered with fragments of shells, sodden bird feathers, and various detritus of the sea. Hanamiya ran his hands back over his sopping wet hair, pushing it out of his face. Imayoshi was watching Hanamiya, and that irritated him. Hanamiya pointed at a pinkish shell fragment, half the size of his palm. "Do you know what that is?"

"A crab shell."

"What kind of crab?"

Imayoshi glanced at him. "I don't know."

"And this seaweed?"

"I couldn't tell it from any other."

"It's a fragment of kelp." Hanamiya ran the slippery weed between his fingers. "The tools are useless to anyone who doesn't know why they're significant, what they do." 

They walked quite a distance down the beach, Hanamiya giving very little in the way of actual magical knowledge. He talked about the shifting of the tides, spotting a storm coming out of the southwest, the flora and fauna of their particular location. "Sea witchery isn't like your fire magic. It can't be summoned up anywhere. If I were on the other side of this ocean I'd be lost. I'd have to learn everything all over again."

Imayoshi listened, asked only pertinent questions, and hardly took his eyes off of Hanamiya. His gaze unsettled Hanamiya, and he didn't know what to make of his irritation when that gaze wasn't on him. "Are you listening to me?" he demanded.

"Of course," Imayoshi said, turning back to Hanamiya with the full force of his smile. Hanamiya blinked and scowled and looked away. 

They returned sometime midafternoon, when the air was warm with the last breath of summer. "You couldn't have picked a worse time to arrive," Hanamiya commented. "Winters are miserable on this shore."

"Stormy?"

"Not especially. But the downpour is near constant, wet and cold till the chill soaks   into your bones."

"I wouldn't think it would bother someone who swims in the sea."

Hanamiya huffed. "It doesn't anymore, but you should be worried about your fires, shouldn't you?"

Imayoshi smiled. "Perhaps you're right. Will we meet again tomorrow?"

Hanamiya hadn't expected Imayoshi would actually be patient enough to meet him again. "Yes. The same place."

Imayoshi nodded. "The sunrise was beautiful this morning, it was a shame you missed it." It was the first comment he had made about their supposed meeting time all day. Hanamiya was almost embarrassed.

"I had things to attend to." That was a lie, he had sent the others off to the village and skulked about the kelp forest for over an hour before he had gone to meet Imayoshi. Hanamiya was more irritated that he felt the need to explain himself even a little. 

"Are you hungry? Imayoshi asked as they neared the house. "I could certainly make something for you--"

"No," Hanamiya said, perhaps too sharply. He had accepted Imayoshi's hospitality too many times already, and did not care to increase the debt. Soon enough, he imagined, Imayoshi would want to see how Hanamiya lived, and Hanamiya did not like him well enough to even consider such an excursion. 

They passed several days like this—Hanamiya did all the talking, very little of it having to do with magic, and Imayoshi listened. They walked the beach a mile or more in each direction, until Imayoshi was noting changes due to the weather or the tides, with uncanny accuracy for someone who had so recently come to the area. Hanamiya kept stretching the limits of Imayoshi’s patience and it seemed Imayoshi only expanded them, smiling serenely and only making an occasional comment about a beautiful sunrise. It was enough to drive Hanamiya mad, he didn’t know why he kept meeting with Imayoshi.

The onset of winter rains confined them to the house Imayoshi shared with Susa, where the exchange part of their arrangement truly began.

They were sitting before the fire, the whole room bathed in the orange glow. They were burning cedar wood, Hanamiya could tell by the scent. Imayoshi sat almost hip to hip with him, a book splayed open in his hand as they discussed the fundamentals a young fire mage learned, how to summon up an element foreign to the body without hurting oneself. When Imayoshi demonstrated, sparks danced across the skin of his palm, fizzling out before they ever hit the floor.

He was curious if Hanamiya could produce salt water while not in the sea. Hanamiya argued that it was ludicrous to assume he could simply manifest it the way Imayoshi manifested fire—spinning water drops out of the moisture in the air was one thing, but bubbling up a handful of sea water in one’s palm was quite another. They bickered over it for nearly an hour before Hanamiya snapped in frustration and made the effort.

For a moment, neither of them said a word. They stared at Hanamiya’s hand, where a rime of salt had formed, crusted into the creases of his palm.

Slowly, Imayoshi said, “Most mages can only produce ash the first time they do something like this.”

Hanamiya rose to the go to the sink, working the pump with his free hand and washing the rime into the basin. He hadn’t expected anything to happen, and the success—if it could be called that—had unnerved him.

He almost totally ignored Imayoshi after that, repeating the exercise, bringing up salt, bringing up traces of sand, until he opened his hand and a trickle of salt water slipped through his fingers. Imayoshi was delighted, taking notes on the event, and Hanamiya only stared, watching the salt water drip from his fingers until it dried in the warmth of the room, leaving again only the crust of salt. He pressed a finger to his lips, still not quite believing it even as he tasted the salt on his tongue.

They argued less, after that. Hanamiya still complained, loudly, of the obnoxious fire mage whenever he returned to the others, but he spent less time making Imayoshi wait for him. He regularly appeared under the eaves of the house, so that Susa left a linen towel hanging by the door, still irritated by the trail of water Hanamiya frequently left behind him.

They worked for long hours, though Hanamiya was always surprised to glance up and realize the world outside had gone dark.

Winter set in its cold teeth, and Hanamiya was warmed at the hearthside, until he returned once more to the chill of the water. It even snowed, the fine white dusting ending at the tide’s highest reach, softening the edges of the trees, and washing the world grey.

Imayoshi met him each cold morning with hot tea, and they forgot their hellos as they immediately spoke of new ideas, of conversations had the previous day. In a basin of sea water Hanamiya showed Imayoshi how one might manipulate the flow of the water, and Imayoshi experimented with the fire in the hearth, careful not to drag them too high, or make the fire too hot. Hanamiya did not ask about the number of times Imayoshi met him with bandaged hands.


	3. Silver

"Why don't you live in the village?"

Hanamiya glanced up. He had been turning curiously through Imayoshi's notes, seeing what had been written about their experiments, about him. Imayoshi stood by the fire, heating another pot of tea as the rain trickled off the roof. It was nearly spring, but the rain had not slowed so much as lightened. "What the hell does it matter?"

Imayoshi shrugged. "I remembered you said no one thought of you as neighbors. It doesn't seem like any of you have to live in the water, so why bother? Your grandmother had a house in the village."

Hanamiya made a show of leafing through the pages, gathering his thoughts. It was the first time Imayoshi had asked a question like this, totally unrelated to magic. "I suppose I prefer the separation," he said, avoiding Imayoshi's gaze. "No one to come snooping." He sounded unconvincing to his own ears. 

"How did you come by your rag tag band of misfits?" He meant it teasingly, but the comment rankled Hanamiya.

"We had nowhere else to go," Hanamiya said sharply.

Imayoshi was quiet a moment. "I apologize," he said. "I meant nothing by it."

Hanamiya wouldn't look at him, staring at a page he was sure he'd read three times already. 

"The weather should clear up soon," Imayoshi said. "Will we resume our walks?"

"Don't you have work you're supposed to be doing while you're out here?"

He chuckled. "It's a year of study, they never said how we had to conduct our study." He poured two new cups of tea. "Besides, I can hardly stop now. We're starting to get somewhere."

Hanamiya had no idea what that meant but he was surprised to find that he didn't mind. He accepted the tea cup and pointed at one of Imayoshi's sketches. (They were crude, he wasn't much of an artist.) "Is that meant to be a person?"

"Yes, what does it look like?"

"I've seen fish that look like that."

#

The sun broke through the clouds, and Imayoshi was waiting for Hanamiya on the rocks, still wrapped in his winter coat. "Good morning," he said, cheerful. "It seems spring's come at last." The daylight illuminated his face as if in gold, and his smile didn't seem sly or knowing--only genuine.

Hanamiya stood half in the water for a moment, as if dazzled by an apparition. 

"Are you alright?" Imayoshi asked, calling over the wind. 

Hanamiya shook his head, shouted "Fine," and climbed up to meet him. The spray had slicked the rocks, and though he'd climbed them a thousand times before, his grip slipped. Hanamiya felt the punch of fear as he lost his balance, and a taut jerk as Imayoshi's hand grasped his arm almost to the elbow, his other hand clasped tight to the rock. 

He grasped Imayoshi's arm and heaved himself up, muttering his thanks as they slipped back down to the sand. A fall down the rocks would have killed him. 

As if nothing had happened, Imayoshi said, "I am still curious how it is you survive underwater."

"Don't you mages have ways to keep from getting burned?"

"When the fire is external, yes. Summoned fire is notoriously much more difficult to control." He smiled as if they were discussing the weather.

"Well. I have ways of breathing underwater." They strolled, for a while not saying anything at all. It was a comfortable silence, enjoying the morning before they set to work. 

Hanamiya's mind began to wander. Seto and Hara had begun to tease him, about how much success he must have been having, "giving that mage the run around." Even Furuhashi had made remarks about how much time he was spending away from them, burrowed away in the fire mages' house. He'd brushed the comments off, giving some excuse about how insufferable Imayoshi became if he was late, and how difficult it was to slip away once he was there. 

Yamazaki had asked why he didn't just stop bothering to go. 

Rather abruptly, Imayoshi looped his arm through Hanamiya's, as if they were old compatriots. The wool of his coat scratched against Hanamiya's arm. "I've been thinking," he said, "about the success we've had with each other's methods, even though the elements would seem to be fundamentally incompatible."

"Oh?" Hanamiya asked, not bothering to pull away, though spite whispered that he should. "Don't tell me you want me to try summoning up fire, now." 

"Not quite," Imayoshi said. "It is a dangerous element to deal with--I thought, actually, I might try my hand at sea water." 

Hanamiya snorted. "Your mage school will be thrilled, I'm sure."

"More than you might think. If I were to return with some proficiency in a skill previously unknown to me, and in fact unknown to the rest of the school, I could become quite valuable to them." 

That again. Hanamiya had to conceal his look of irritation. He disliked the thought that Imayoshi would use this all for his gain. 

"You're quiet this morning, Makoto."

Hanamiya startled at the use of his given name. "Not all of us feel the need to talk as much as you do," he snapped. 

Imayoshi shrugged. "Well, what do you think? Would I have any success at all with water?"

"I wouldn't know. This would be the place to do it, though." Hanamiya glanced away over the waves. 

"I'd like you to teach me."

Hanamiya looked at him. "Have you lost your mind?"

"Well, you are the only sea witch with whom I am well acquainted." The others had taken him up on his invitation to visit whenever they wished, but Imayoshi had still spent much of his time with Hanamiya, never truly far away. 

"That alone should be enough reason for you to ask someone else."

"Who would you recommend?"

Imayoshi had called him on his bluff, and Hanamiya shook his head, muttering a curse. "What's in it for me, hm? The pleasure of your company?"

"Well, of course," Imayoshi grinned. "But also the hot meals you're enjoying at my table."

"Cooked largely by your housemate."

"Susa doesn't mind you a much as he pretends to."

"Of course he doesn't. If I go away he has to go back to contending with you." Imayoshi’s arm was still through his, hand tucked back into the protection of his pockets. Hanamiya tried not to be peeved about that. “When do you want to try?”

“Is today too soon?”

“I ought to drown you.”

Imayoshi was a dedicated student, however obnoxious he was the rest of the time. They argued incessantly over his technique as he began his first attempts with sea water, Hanamiya was insistent that Imayoshi was treating it too much the same way he treated fire. “You don’t try to control it, you have to work with it. You’re making this more difficult than it needs to be!”

Imayoshi protested only that he had been trained to be cautious, and Hanamiya scoffed. “Trained? Like a dog?”

Imayoshi looked at him a moment and went quiet, bending again to the task. In an hour, he had accomplished the simple challenge Hanamiya had given him—to pull a sphere of water from the basin, spinning over his fingertips as delicately as a ball. He smiled, and his concentration broke, and the sphere collapsed, soaking his sleeve and shoes.

Hanamiya laughed. “Do it again, I didn’t get to fully appreciate it the first time.”

Imayoshi reached for a linen towel, sopping up the puddle on the floor. “It seems I have to go find something dry to wear.”

“Why? You’re just going to soak yourself again.” Hanamiya glanced out the window, noting the late hour. “Practice that. It’s time for me to be leaving.”

“You could stay.”

“Hardly. You’ll get me to drink and I won’t be able to find my way to the water.” Hanamiya meant it as a joke.

“There’s room enough for you to sleep.”

Hanamiya blinked. Imayoshi wasn’t looking at him, he was busy wringing water from his sleeves, but the silence felt heavy with expectation.

“I couldn’t.” Hanamiya turned away before he could see Imayoshi’s face. “I spend too much time with you already.” He stepped to the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Hanamiya was almost reluctant to meet him the next morning, fearing, he supposed, that he’d spoiled something between them, and that Imayoshi would not greet him with his usual smile. Worse, that he might not be there at all.

Imayoshi was sat on the rocks as he usually was, and he called out his usual cheerful greeting, as if it were any other day. Hanamiya would not admit how relieved he was.

They still strolled the beach in the mornings, talking less and less during those walks, Imayoshi’s arm looped through his. It was easy, to keep up those walks, away from prying eyes, not having to say anything.

Imayoshi didn’t ask him to stay that night.

Hanamiya almost wished he did.

#

Imayoshi was frequently awake before dawn, refining whatever particular technique Hanamiya had left him with the night before. He had never been much of a sleeper, and he had much to unlearn when it came to mastering this new element—or that was what he told Susa.

He had grown accustomed to the rumble and roar of the ocean at the doorstep. He was not sure how he would sleep when they returned to the city, and the most he heard of the water was its gurgling through the pipes. There was a harbor, certainly, but the placid slapping of water against dock was nothing compared to the ever-present sound he had lived with for not yet half a year.

He sat lower on the rocks that morning, waiting for Hanamiya. He drew his fingers along the rocks, pulling the droplets of water together into streams, running up the rocks to him, spiraling together into an ever-growing sphere. He couldn’t look up, keeping his concentration on the sphere, trying to hold it together.

That was why he didn’t notice Hanamiya was almost in front of him until a movement caught his eye, and the sphere collapsed.

Imayoshi sighed, and looked up at Hanamiya.

Hanamiya was looking at him with his face creased in concentration, sea water dripping from his hair. Imayoshi smiled at him. “Good morn—” Hanamiya leaned forward, cupping his hands around Imayoshi’s face. His mouth tasted like salt brine, lips chapped, but his skin and the trails of water that ran down Imayoshi’s neck were cool.

Imayoshi sucked in a breath when Hanamiya pulled back. He stared at Imayoshi for a moment, hands still on Imayoshi’s skin.

Imayoshi licked his lips, smiled again. “Good morning, Makoto. Maybe we could do that again, someplace drier.”

They made their way down to the sand—Imayoshi linked his hand with Hanamiya’s, unable to hide the smile that crept across his face. Hanamiya’s fingers twined through his, hesitant at first, then firm. Down on the beach Imayoshi pulled Hanamiya to him again, kissing him as the wind tugged at their clothes and brushed their hair into their faces. Hanamiya pressed into him, kissing him the way a drowning man gasped for air.

Imayoshi anchored his hands in the small of Hanamiya’s back, in the curve of his neck, keeping him close, feeling as if a wave had pinned him to the rocks. He felt in Hanamiya all the surging of the tide, relentless against the shore.

Hanamiya paused, panting for breath, still pressed against Imayoshi. His skin had warmed, his hair had begun to dry. His eyes were hazy, only half-open as he searched for something to say, to fill the air between them.

“I’ve been working,” Imayoshi murmured. “How do you think I did?”

Hanamiya’s eyes opened, Imayoshi could almost see his mind clicking over. “Your focus has improved.” Slowly he pushed off of Imayoshi, running his hand back through his hair.

“Let’s walk,” Imayoshi said, grabbing his hand once more. “I want to ask you about something.” He didn’t have anything to ask about, it just seemed like the best way to engage him. Their fingers fit together like they were made for it.

The amount of time they had spent together had left Imayoshi with little time to really think about whatever this was—he only knew that he liked Hanamiya’s company, liked the storm-tossed look in his eyes when he climbed out of the water, and (he knew now) liked the way Hanamiya’s mouth fit against his own.

He hadn’t yet had time to sort out why it had disappointed him so much when Hanamiya declined his invitation to stay the night.

They were quiet, for much of the walk. Hanamiya seemed to have forgotten that Imayoshi had supposedly wanted to ask him a question.

Imayoshi leaned into his arm, smiling. “If I advance far enough, will you show me how you and the others live underwater?”

Hanamiya seemed startled out of a thought, and frowned. “What does it matter how?”

“You can’t blame me for being curious about something I’ve never seen before.” Imayoshi reached over with his other hand, touching Hanamiya’s arm. “Besides, you know my home at least as well as I do, by now. I’ve swum before but only on the surface. I can’t imagine what all that—” He made a sweeping gesture toward the water. “—looks like when you’re really out in it.”

Hanamiya was quiet a moment, chewing the inside of his lip as if mealing over the thought between his teeth. “There is… a technique I use to breathe underwater. If you can learn it, I’ll show you.”

Imayoshi hadn’t expected him to agree. He grinned, pressing a kiss to Hanamiya’s cheek. “Perfect,” Imayoshi said, as Hanamiya went scarlet. “When can I start?”

#

Hanamiya sat cross-legged on the floor as Imayoshi filled the tub he meant to practice in. Susa walked past the door, glanced out, and muttered something about “a damn show-off.” Imayoshi was bent to the task of pulling ribbon after ribbon of water from the surf, fluttering over the beach. The first three attempts had crashed into the sand, but he seemed to be adapting to the task, and had filled the basin halfway.

Hanamiya was turning through the books again, though he didn’t have the focus to read any of the words.

His head had been spinning since he saw Imayoshi sitting on the rocks that morning, all wind-tossed hair, focused so completely on the water spinning under his fingertips. He hadn’t meant to kiss him, hadn’t thought about it really—it was only that Imayoshi looked up, and smiled, and Hanamiya had to know what those lips felt like.

He barely remembered their walk, only that he’d agreed to show Imayoshi the kelp forest if he could teach himself to breathe underwater.

The others would never let him live it down if they saw him. He’d let himself become mush-headed over someone he claimed annoyed him. He’d made fun of Yamazaki for the same thing, with Hara.

He closed the book in his hand, rubbing his face. He’d thought he’d be smarter than this.

Hanamiya rubbed his fingers together, calling up drops of salt water the way Imayoshi called up a spark. It was a strange feeling, channeling the water through some undetermined thread, pulling it through his own skin. No wonder fire mages so often ran the risk of getting themselves killed. Pulling an element like that through your own mortal flesh--few people would grow old doing that. 

He closed his hand over the drops, rubbed it into the hem of his sleeve. Perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing for Imayoshi to take his knowledge of water back with him. 

#

It took time, for Imayoshi to master the skill Hanamiya set him to. It wasn't surprising--the task was difficult, and Imayoshi was a novice. Hanamiya flatly refused to take him anywhere until he had perfected the skill. "Otherwise you'll drown, and I'll be blamed for it."

Perhaps partly Imayoshi's slow progress could be blamed on the time he spent beguiling Hanamiya for a kiss. Hanamiya would have liked to say he was a strict teacher who brooked no such diversions, but the truth was rather more embarrassing than that. 

As Imayoshi was set to a solitary task, Hanamiya didn't go every day, but rather every three, and Imayoshi made his displeasure with the arrangement known, complaining rather teasingly that Hanamiya had "abandoned him for another mage." "What will I do now?" Imayoshi joked. "Just me and the baby--" he gestured Susa, who steadfastly ignored him, "here all alone."

"You'll drown yourself in the tub and it will serve you right," Hanamiya retorted. "I have responsibilities other than pandering to your every whim."

"And what are those, exactly?" Imayoshi smiled, but his question seemed genuine. 

"Go up to the bluff above the village tomorrow morning. You'll see."

#

Imayoshi talked Susa into going with him, though Susa gave no shortage of complaints about Imayoshi waking him early and not even giving him the chance to properly eat before they set out for the village, awake before even the fishermen so that they would be in the village by daybreak.

Imayoshi carried the lantern, humming to himself as they walked. The sound was soon lost in the murmur of the waves. 

The sky was brightening as they reached the foot of the bluff, and when they were halfway up the first fishermen set out their boats, pushing out into the water. Imayoshi scanned the shore and the water both, but saw no sign of Hanamiya or any of the others. The breeze picked up, and by the time they reached the top a clear, soft blue had filled the sky. Imayoshi snuffed out the lantern and settled at the base of a tree, warped by the ever constant wind, all its branches pointing inland. Susa stood with his hands shoved in his pockets, stifling a yawn. 

"I'm not sure what we're supposed to be seeing, Ima--" Susa cut off abruptly, taking a step closer to the edge, to get a better look at the water. 

Imayoshi quickly cleared his spectacles of any smudges or salt rime, a hand anchored on the rough bark of the tree as he watched the water in the sound ripple and turn color. The murky gray of the water had become silver, boiling with the thousands--millions of fish that had surged up out of the deeper waters. 

The fishermen's nets filled to bursting, their boats swayed under the weight. "I don't believe it," Imayoshi laughed. "All this time..." The book he had found Hanamiya's grandmother in had said she could sing fish to shore, that there had not been a season in a hundred years where the village had gone hungry because of this family of sea witches. Hanamiya had never once made any remarks about it. 

He'd said nothing at all of what he did for the village, only complained occasionally about people needing things from him. Imayoshi had thought it would be simple spells, or wishes for good weather or something of that nature. Even if Hanamiya had told him about the fish--he never could have envisioned something like this. 

As quickly as it had come, it was gone. The shoals of silver fish vanished once more into cooler, deeper waters, and the fishermen returned to shore knee-deep in their haul. Imayoshi didn't wait for Susa as he made his way back down the trail, rushing to the village. Though he hadn't seen Hanamiya at all, he knew somehow that he would be there. 

He found Hanamiya among his companions, laughing about something. The whole beach was set to the task of cleaning and preserving the fish, and it seemed that they, too, had set themselves to work, spilling fish guts into the stream that ran through the sand and back out to sea. Gulls were already swarming that stream, raising a cacophony as they fought each other for the spoils.

Hanamiya glanced up, and smiled. “Good morning.”

“What’s the king of the coals doing out here for our little fish party?” Hara asked, slicing open a fish from stem to stern.

Imayoshi spoke directly to Hanamiya. “That was incredible.”

Hanamiya went a little pink in the face and glanced away. “Not as much as you think. We do it every year about mid-spring, when these fish start moving north again.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“We all work on it together,” Hanamiya said, gesturing at the others. “Used to be the village just got by, but now it’s prospering.”

“Fat lot of good it does us the rest of the year,” Hara yawned, and nudged Yamazaki. “Remember that year we accidentally drove up a bunch of sharks with everything else?” Hanamiya kicked him.

“Do you do other things like that?” Imayoshi asked.

Hanamiya shrugged. “Sometimes. Squid are more difficult, they’re smarter.” He glanced at Imayoshi. “You gonna stand around all day are you gonna make yourself useful?”

Imayoshi looked at the fish, and back at Hanamiya. “I’ve… never cleaned a fish before.”

“Well it’s a lot easier than breathing underwater, sit down.” He picked up another knife, offering the handle to Imayoshi. “Not everything to do with the sea is pretty.”

That night had Imayoshi scrubbing his hands in hot water, picking silver scales out from under his fingernails, trying to soak off the smell of fish. Susa had been wise enough to make his way back alone when Imayoshi had left him, not wanting to be roped into the work. “You’re just going to have to wait for it to wear off.”

“I suppose.” Imayoshi dried his hands on a length of linen, his shoulders aching. He wondered why Hanamiya and the others did that kind of work. It seemed to be of no real benefit to them—they kept little of the fish for themselves, and expended a great deal of effort in helping the villagers to store it.

The villagers did seem to be grateful to them, though—even celebratory. Certainly more than the merely tolerant attitude that Imayoshi had seen them adopt before. They mistrusted sea witchery as much as they depended on it. There were certainly those in the city around the mage school who had similar feelings-. It was only that Imayoshi rarely had to encounter them personally, immersed as he was among other mages.

Hanamiya spoke of the mage schools with scorn, but Imayoshi wondered if he would truly hate it, if he were there.

He rubbed spearmint leaves between his hands, though they did little to hide the smell of fish on his hands. “Susa,” he said, “what do you think of the time we’ve spent here?”

Susa glanced up from his meal. “I think you’ve been remarkably less of a nuisance than I expected you to be.”

“I mean seriously.” He sat by the hearth, throwing the crumpled mint leaves into the fire. “You’ve been making progress?”

Susa sighed, and nodded. “I have been. And what about you? Last time I looked to see what you were doing it looked like you were trying to drown yourself in our bath.”

“I’m learning to breathe underwater.”

“That explains it, then.” It had been a great long while since Imayoshi had been able to surprise Susa. They had known each other since childhood, long before they revealed their talent for magic and had both joined the mage school in their city. Susa had come to answer many of the thing that Imayoshi did with nothing more than a shake of his head or a roll of his eyes. “How are you going to present these new skills to the school, exactly?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You can’t become proficient in the next six months.”

“I know.” Imayoshi pressed his fingers together. “It will take more work.”

“Do you suppose they’ll give you leave to return?”

“Perhaps.” Imayoshi turned. “Do you think I could persuade him to come with us? Even for a while…”

Susa shrugged. “I don’t know. But he doesn’t seem like he’d be easily persuaded. Unless you were honest, I suppose, and told him it wasn’t really about the magic.”

Imayoshi glanced at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course not.” Susa refilled his tea cup. “Anyway, you should sleep. You look like hell, you try to do anymore work tonight and you might actually drown yourself.”


	4. Shore

The day came near midsummer. Hanamiya had secretly been dreading the creep of days, drawing ever closer to autumn, and the one-year mark of Imayoshi’s arrival.

He was angry with himself for caring—he had meant for all this to be nothing but a momentary diversion, something to keep himself occupied with before life became ordinary again, and he returned the humdrum routines of the village that were enough to lull anyone into complacency. Now he looked at those routines with a sense of suffocation, anticipating already the boredom that in the past had driven him to summoning storms.

If Imayoshi noticed anything amiss with Hanamiya, he said nothing. Hanamiya doubted he had noticed anything—he was too busy celebrating his recent success. He had learned to breathe underwater.

They stowed their clothes in the rocks, stripped down to underclothes. Imayoshi’s arms prickled in the wind, which never seemed very warm, even in summer. He smiled though, readjusting his spectacles. “You just jump in here?”

Hanamiya nodded. “The undertow isn’t as strong, here—it’ll give you the chance to get your bearings. I’ll go in first, in case anything happens.” _In case you almost drown._

“Alright, then.” Imayoshi held onto one of the rocks, keeping his balance. Hanamiya nodded, and leapt in. The water closed over his head and Hanamiya looked up, pushing away from the rocks. The waves surged to push him back, but he was a strong enough swimmer to keep his distance as Imayoshi plunged in after him.

He grabbed Imayoshi by the arm, to keep him from being slammed back into the rocks. Imayoshi seemed to take a moment, a stream of bubbles leaving his lips, and then he grinned, obviously having gotten the hang of things. Hanamiya nodded, and pulled him down, under the tug of the waves.

“It’s strange, isn’t it?” Imayoshi asked. His voice reverberated oddly—he hadn’t quite gotten the speech down.

“For you, maybe.” Hanamiya released his hand to better swim, sweeping ahead of Imayoshi by a few paces, looking back only to make sure that he was following.

He was a decent enough swimmer, though it was obvious he was out of practice. He didn’t have the natural movements of someone who spent most of their time in the water.

“Keep close,” Hanamiya said, “I don’t want you getting swept out.”

He slid low, skimming along the sand as they came into the forest, slipping between the long, soft stems of kelp. He could sense Imayoshi behind him by the movements in the water, sensed his hesitation when he stopped to look around.

Hanamiya paused, sliding to anchor his feet against the rocks.

Imayoshi was half kneeling, looking up through the weeds. Hanamiya knew the sight well—golden light filtered through the green leaves, the water. Everything in motion, teeming with fish and seals, the kelp swaying. Imayoshi was seeing it all for the first time.

Hanamiya crossed the distance between them, drifting to Imayoshi’s side. Imayoshi turned his head, brushed his lips across Hanamiya’s.

Hanamiya heard the others’ voices, and pulled back. “Come on,” he said, “I haven’t told them what you’ve been working on. They’ll be shocked to see you.”

Imayoshi nodded, making sure his spectacles were secure. Hanamiya pushed the kelp stems aside as he swam, opening a path for Imayoshi. He spotted the others a little above them and moved up toward them.

Yamazaki spotted him first. “Hanamiya—” Whatever he had been about to say was almost immediately forgotten as he (and everyone else) realized Hanamiya was not alone.

Hara laughed, spiraling down the water and almost colliding with Imayoshi, who ducked back just quick enough to avoid smacking their skulls together. “So that’s what you were so busy working on,” Hara said, poking Imayoshi’s forehead. “He’s been complaining about getting you off his case and all this time he’s been working out a way to bring you home with him.”

Hanamiya was close enough to kick Hara in the shoulder. “Go bother someone else, you brainless jellyfish.”

Hara made a face at him but swum back to Yamazaki, elbowing him like they’d shared some joke. Yamazaki sighed.

Hanamiya glanced at Imayoshi, not sure what to say. Imayoshi smiled a little, shrugged. "I see why you spend so much time here," he said, his voice still echoing oddly. "Given the choice between land and this--who would choose land?"

Hanamiya felt relieved, though he couldn't say why. "A strange sentiment from a fire mage."

The water seemed to soften Imayoshi's chuckle. "Maybe so."

He stayed with them in the kelp forest until the water began to grow dark, and Hanamiya insisted they head back for shore. "You aren't practiced enough to do this in your sleep."

Imayoshi was quiet as they worked their way up, but not the wondrous quiet he'd given when they first dived down. He wasn't looking around him--whenever Hanamiya glanced back, it was him Imayoshi's eyes were on. 

Hanamiya's feet found rock and he pulled Imayoshi up after him. There was yet enough light to find where they had stored their clothes, though Hanamiya didn't plan to stay long enough to dress. He expected that the others would have no end of jokes ready by the time he returned, and there was no sense in giving them more time to prepare. 

"Well, good night--" Hanamiya began, turning to leave. 

Imayoshi caught his wrist. "Wait," he said, soft. "Stay with me tonight."

Hanamiya stared at him. "Susa--"

"Susa is in the village tonight, or at least he was planning to be. He goes in every now and then to send letters and pick up any replies, and then he stays with the family of some young fisherman who's fond of him." Imayoshi laughed a little, to say that it was a bit more than mere fondness. "I'm not trying to seduce you, Makoto."

Hanamiya rather doubted that, but he hesitated. "And if I do stay?"

"I promise I'll be a most gracious host." He was teasing, now, and Hanamiya wished he disliked it. 

Imayoshi's hand pressed into his, and Hanamiya nodded, releasing his hand only so he could dress. Regardless of Imayoshi's reassurances about Susa's absence or the innocence of his motives, Hanamiya was in no mind to walk the beach with Imayoshi in little more than underclothes. The thin shirt provided at comfort of a covering. 

Imayoshi grasped his hand the moment it was free, somehow already dry and warm while Hanamiya was still soaked. 

The others would tease him relentlessly when they realized he'd spent the night, but Hanamiya couldn't quite find it in him to care. 

Susa had left a lantern burning over the door, anticipating Imayoshi's late return. Imayoshi took it off the door and the flame went out. Hanamiya followed him into the dark house, hanging back in the thin moonlight as Imayoshi went to the hearth. He rubbed his hands together, clapped, and flames sprung up, illuminating the room in an orange glow. 

"That's better," he murmured. 

Hanamiya sat by the hearth, wringing out his hair with the linen towel. Imayoshi moved to the stove, building a fire there and making himself busy with cooking while Hanamiya dried out. They didn't talk much, the way they were on their walks. They didn't have to make unnecessary efforts. 

"What did you think?" 

Imayoshi glanced up from the stove. "I've been thinking all day about how I'll describe it. Nothing satisfactory yet... how do you explain something that the other person barely has a frame of reference for?"

Hanamiya smiled. "Like describing fire magic to a sea witch."

Imayoshi's laugh was so quiet Hanamiya almost didn't hear it. "I suppose so." He poured out the stir fry he had made, bringing two bowls over to the hearth. Hanamiya had never felt so powerfully hungry. They ate, and chatted idly. There was something easy in speaking to each other, even with Hanamiya's jabs and Imayoshi's sly comments. 

There was a bath in which they sluiced the salt and sand off of their skin, the water warmed by some clever trick Imayoshi had devised and was quite proud of. It was the first time in a long time that Hanamiya hadn't felt the grit of salt on his skin.

Hanamiya didn't know how long they talked. The fire never died down, and the sky outside only grew blacker. He stretched and yawned, and Imayoshi extended his hand to Hanamiya, pulling him up off the floor. 

The room in which Imayoshi slept was on the other side of the hearth wall, so that a comfortable warmth permeated the room. It was too dark to see much of it, and Hanamiya was too tired to look. Imayoshi rolled out the bed mat, and pulled the downy pillows and blankets from a neat stack in the corner. Hanamiya blearily rubbed his eyes, and muttered, "I hope you meant that part about not seducing me."

He could sense Imayoshi's smile in the dark. "I'd hate to have you yawn while I tried to." He went to the chest by the wall and found a sleep shirt, handing it to Hanamiya. "I think anything of mine should probably fit you."

Hanamiya nodded, pulling his salt-stiff shirt over his head. He left his clothes in a pile by the door, crawling into the bed while Imayoshi pulled on his own sleep clothes. He slid in next to Hanamiya, folding his spectacles neatly just beyond the pillow. Hanamiya burrowed into the blankets, and after a moment, tucked his forehead against Imayoshi's chest.

Imayoshi wrapped an arm around Hanamiya's shoulders, tucked his chin into Hanamiya's hair. Imayoshi's sleep shirt carried with it a whiff of the cedar chest he kept it in, and his skin still had the scent of the sea on it.

Hanamiya closed his eyes, and was only halfway through a thought, wondering how long that scent would last, when he was lost to sleep. 

He woke slowly, aware first of the growing light of dawn through the narrow window. He was curled around Imayoshi's back, his face pressed into the sleep shirt. There were sea birds calling to each other outside, their cries almost lost in the murmur of the surf. The house was still, Susa hadn't yet returned. 

Yawning, Hanamiya unfurled, stretching his limbs. He had forgotten the stiffness that came with sleeping on the ground. The room had cooled, and the skin on his arms prickled until Hanamiya pulled the blankets up again, savoring the warmth. Imayoshi stirred and rubbed his face. Still hazy from sleep, his face looked softer. He saw Hanamiya already awake and smiled, running a hand back through his hair. “Good morning.”

Hanamiya averted his eyes under the pretense of stretching once more, groaning. “This floor is hard as rocks.”

Imayoshi laughed softly, climbing to his feet. “I’ll make breakfast.”

Hanamiya lay in the dim, cool room for a while, cursing himself for agreeing to stay. Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d shown Imayoshi his home, bad enough that he’d taught him all that he had, bad enough that he’d kissed him…

Hanamiya pulled a pillow over his face, wondering how successful he might be at suffocating himself.

He laid there long enough that Imayoshi came back to tap on the door frame, asking if Hanamiya was going to get up and eat anything.

"I'll be as blubbery as a seal if I keep eating your food," Hanamiya grumbled, shoving the pillow aside. "Let me get dressed."

Imayoshi, still in his sleep shirt, shrugged and left him there. Hanamiya rubbed at his eyes, sighing. This wasn't supposed to happen, he told himself. What was he supposed to do when autumn came, sooner than later, and Imayoshi went home? This was not a storybook, he wasn't going to leave the sea behind to follow wherever Imayoshi went. He wouldn't expect Imayoshi to stay. 

He wouldn't even ask it of him.

He was conscious of the scent of brine on his clothes, and he wondered how Imayoshi could stand to kiss him when he smelled like that. 

Imayoshi was already eating, and Hanamiya found he was irritated that Imayoshi hadn't waited for him. He sat down, taking some for himself.

"I wanted to ask you a question," Imayoshi said, not looking directly at Hanamiya so much as near him. 

Hanamiya glanced up. "Oh?" Imayoshi had never prefaced his questions before. 

"In the autumn," Imayoshi said, "Susa and I are going back to the mage school, it's at the far end of the sound from here."

Hanamiya glanced away. So Imayoshi had been thinking about his imminent departure as well. 

"It's a port city," Imayoshi said. "The school itself isn't far from the water."

"No."

Imayoshi glanced up at him. "Am I that transparent?"

Hanamiya picked at his food. "Why else would you mention its proximity to the water?" He shook his head. "The water in ports like that is fouled and not fit to be near, let alone in. Besides," Hanamiya put food in his mouth mechanically, without appetite. "I have more important things to do than follow you home."

Imayoshi was quiet for a moment. "You would be beyond a success," he said. "Your practice is virtually unknown to our world... and you successfully taught a fire mage to work with sea water."

"Most people aren't amenable to my teaching style. I have no interest in becoming a specimen for your colleagues study." Hanamiya wished he would stop. 

"I promise you'd be respected--"

"No, Shouichi!" Hanamiya hadn't meant to snap. Too late to correct the mistake, he forged ahead. "I am not leaving my home for you."

Silence hung between them like a net. Imayoshi nodded, and looked away. "Of course."

#

There was no time for Imayoshi to begin attempting to master a new skill of any import. Hanamiya showed him a few tricks that he typically had down in a week. Their talk was less comfortable, Imayoshi’s entreaties for a kiss less frequent.

He never acted as if he were disappointed by Hanamiya’s rejection, never even spoke of his invitation again. He spoke, sometimes, of what he would do when they left. They would pack up everything they had came with, or gained since then, and in the evening they would carry it across the beach to the village, where they would load it into the large fishing boat they had hired to carry them back up the sound. They would sleep the night in the house of the fisherman who was ferrying them, leaving just after dawn. If the weather was fair and the currents good, the journey would take them little more than a long day, heaving them into the safety of port at sunset.

Imayoshi speculated that the professors at the mage school would be less than pleased when they heard that he had not spent his year studying fire magic. But, he said, they would put aside their misgivings when they saw what he has mastered just in the space of a year. They would be astonished, he said, at the knowledge he had brought back.

Hanamiya listened, and said little. The days began to wane, and autumn crept closer.

At first, his friends had more than fulfilled his expectations of their mockery. They had been surprised, at first, when he hadn’t returned that night—and then gleeful when he turned up that morning. As the weather began to turn, though, they seemed to sense a change in Hanamiya, and were more hesitant in mentioning Imayoshi.

When Susa spent the night in the village, Hanamiya spent the night with Imayoshi. There was a sort of bitter sweetness to those nights, all tangled legs and a nearly unbearable warmth of closeness.

They didn't speak of goodbyes, of what would happen after. Hanamiya supposed he thought that it would simply end, a closed chapter. There was no sense in denying the inevitable. Life would not end because of one fire mage.

#

That autumn morning dawned clear but windy. Hanamiya came alone to the bluff, perched alone on the edge, where he could watch the village without anyone noticing him much at all. There was little risk of falling--the wind would just as soon shove him backwards onto the bluff. 

He could spot Imayoshi even from that distance, his travel coat buttoned to the neck, the feathers of his hair whipped landward as they said their goodbyes to the villagers who cared enough to receive them. Some of them, Hanamiya thought, probably didn't even remember their names. 

Hanamiya watched them climb into the boat in the clear morning light. He had a long time ago gotten used to the cold winds that came off the water--it was the first time in years he had felt the chill. 

If Imayoshi had paid attention to anything that Hanamiya had taught him, he would have smelled it on the wind, too.

An oncoming storm.

#

"What is it?" Susa asked. He knew the subtle tides of Imayoshi's moods well--better than most, he reckoned--and all was not well with his friend. 

"There's a storm coming," Imayoshi said, scanning the horizon.

It seemed a convenient excuse, and Susa could see no clouds, but the bite of the wind was too much to be ignored. "Hm. That'll be your friend, then, sending us scurrying away."

"No." Imayoshi shook his head. "It doesn't have that feel about it. It's a natural storm." He watched the sea a moment more, and turned back to the boat. "Well, with any luck we'll be well down the length of the sound before it hits."

#

Imayoshi had tried to conceal his disappointment when he didn't see Hanamiya in the village that morning. Toward the end of summer there had been another great migration of fish that they had driven up close to the shore, and the villagers were yet in good spirits about the sea witches they depended on. 

They had spoken some, a few days earlier, in what Imayoshi supposed had been their goodbye. They were sat in front of the fire, Hanamiya making water drops dance between his fingertips. Imayoshi had tucked his chin into Hanamiya's shoulder. "You know I'm leaving soon."

"You won't shut up about it, yes." In the air the water drops spun into the shapes of an eel, a crab, a whale. Hanamiya's face was creased with concentration, his head bent ever so slightly. 

"The school might give me leave to return, sooner rather than later." The salt in Hanamiya's shirt rubbed rough against his cheek. "It would be prestigious for them, to have a mage who's mastered two arts."

"Hmm." A squid, a shark, a fish with long fins. 

"Makoto."

"Mm?"

"Do you even want me to come back?"

Makoto hadn't answered. Shouichi hadn't pressed. He wished he had, now. 

The boat swayed over the water, bearing them back the way they had come. They had chosen to come in the autumn because they had supposed most of their first few months of work would need to be done indoors as it was, and there was no sense in wasting fair weather. Imayoshi had also believed that it would dissuade anyone from checking on them until their stay was nearly half over, and they were well settled. It seemed to have worked, since no one at all had come from the mage school. 

The water stretched before them, grey and heaving. They saw very little of the seals that had dotted the rocks when first they came. Imayoshi thought again of the approaching storm, an uneasy feeling curling through his limbs.

The squall hit them as a hammer against an anvil. One moment the sky was clear, the next it had turned purple as a bruise, the wind howling around them and the water churning. The boatman was shouting to them, steering their boat to shore, Imayoshi thought. It was a moment before he realized he couldn't see shore--a hand to his face and he discovered that his spectacles were no longer on his face. In the struggle for shore he had lost them, and if he was lucky they were somewhere in the bottom of the boat. 

The boatman had spare oars, and soon all three of them were striving against the billowing waves, pushing toward the black line that Imayoshi prayed was land. They would not much longer be able to keep the boat upright. 

In the blur of his vision, something began to teeter in the boat, falling precariously close to the edge. He reached, thinking to save it--the water pitched upward, the boat lurched, and the frigid dark water closed over Imayoshi's head. 

He couldn't see, couldn't breathe--and the thick layers of his clothes which had been meant to protect him from the chill became heavy as stone, and he knew whichever way he was being dragged, it was not up. Panic seized him, and he clawed against the water, trying to catch hold of something, anything.

Something grasped his wrist. 

A hand closed over his mouth, and clear, cold breath filled Imayoshi's lungs. Blurred by both water and Imayoshi's own vision, Hanamiya appeared as a ghostly wraith, like one of the spirits of drowned sailors that were said to haunt the water. When Imayoshi had calmed enough to come to his senses, and could manage breathing on his own, Hanamiya tightened his grip on Imayoshi's hand, and towed him along. 

The chill seemed to have faded somewhat, but Imayoshi's movements were constricted by his clothes, and he felt like little more than a helpless weight attached to Hanamiya's hand. 

He was aware of his head breaking the surface by the spitting rain. Hanamiya hauled him up onto the narrow beach, pulling Imayoshi's arm around his shoulders. Imayoshi was dimly aware of shouting, and in the fog of his vision he saw Susa and the boatman, the boat dragged high on the slope. He was forced out of his soaked clothes and into something dryer, huddling under the makeshift canvas tent. 

Hanamiya sat nearby, hugging his knees to his chest. Imayoshi grinned. "Admit it," he said, "you missed me."

He couldn't be sure, but he thought Hanamiya scowled. "I ought to throw you back."

The storm passed as quickly as it came, moving north. Susa and the boatman began packing up their things once more, and Imayoshi lingered a little while by the fire.

Hanamiya shoved his hands into his pockets. "I never answered your question."

Imayoshi glanced at him. "Hm?"

"I do want you to come back." Hanamiya was staring at the fire. "And soon."

Imayoshi leaned into him, craned his neck for a kiss. “I’ll find a shapeshifter to teach me how to fly and then I can come to you by land, sea, and sky.”

Hanamiya’s face turned pink, and he shoved Imayoshi. “I ought to have let you drown.”

Imayoshi laughed, catching Hanamiya’s face in his hands and kissing his cheek. “You’d miss me too much.”

“Imayoshi!” Susa called. “We’ve lost a lot of time already, if we want to be back by tonight—”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Imayoshi turned back to Hanamiya, smiling. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Good. Because if you don’t come back, I’ll bring the storm to you.” Hanamiya yanked on his shirt and kissed him again.

He watched them go from that slope. Imayoshi’s spectacles had not been found, he supposed they were at the bottom of the sound. Still, he looked back as they pushed off from shore, and raised an arm to wave. Hanamiya returned the wave, and watched them go, standing on the slope until they were out of sight.

He took a running leap into the water, sliding down into the cool dark depths. He’d swim back out to sea, and there he’d wait for winter, and keep an eye on that empty house on the shore.


End file.
